My policy of getting my nuts and bolts elsewhere clearly hasn't worked.

A headline buried deep in this week's City pages breathlessly announces, Focus Set For Float As Sales Leap.

Hmmm. It seems that the man in the middle of the bonfire now lords it over an empire of over 400 Do It Yourself sheds. His Focus Group shifted £1.5 billion's worth of pine effect shelves and regency-look bathroom lights last year, making the company worth more than Afghanistan and almost as much as the cars in President Mugabe's garage.

Mr Archer's share of this, which will be realised if the company goes public, is said to be around 150 large ones. That is, very large ones.

OK, it's moral dilemma time folks. Do Albion supporters continue to lobby for little Willie to head off over the horizon with the rest of the Goldstone Ground's ancien rgime - or do we ask him to leave his £1.5m in the Albion's bank account for as long as possible? Or, heaven forbid, do we consider coughing hesitantly, lowering our eyes, wringing our hands and enquiring in wheedling voices whether he might just consider writing off the debt and at the same time bunging us another few million.

In spite of his imminent windfall, I doubt if Mr Archer is in the best of moods this week. As the type of chap who is less interested in the money he has made than in the money he hasn't, he will be feeling much as Micky Adams did when the Southampton job came up just after he'd gone to Leicester. If only, if only.

If only the FA had given the amber light to Wimbledon's proposed move to Milton Keynes five years ago instead of this week, why Bill would have been able to flog the Albion franchise for millions of quids rather than having to give the wretched thing away for nothing.

Bad timing by Bill but also a bad decision by the football authorities. Nothing new there then. The men in suits always make bad decisions. Sometimes, as this week, they manage to get two things wrong simultaneously. While one part of the FA was undermining England's football heritage with its Wimbledon decision, another was inflating itself with one of its periodic attacks of po-faced self-importance.

Now here I must ask a question. Am I the only person in the world who enjoys an occasional bit of naughtiness in football matches? Remember Ray Wilkins hurling the ball at an official in a dim and distant World Cup? Fantastic! And the way Paulo upended that referee at Hillsborough! Amazing!

If you are the sort of person who turns off the Grand Prix when it looks like there will be a 23-car pile up at the first corner, or who averts his eyes when it is apparent that Miss Ponsonby-ffrench is about to be catapulted off her horse into a pond, then I apologise. To everyone else, I don't.

Jamie Carragher's indiscretion with the 2p coin during the Arsenal-Liverpool cup tie wasn't particularly heroic. There again, it was hardly spectacularly wicked. Throwing things is in the nature of human beings.

Of course, Carragher didn't lob a lump of spearmint. He chucked a coin. Nothing can be more serious than a coin surely? Well yes actually, something can. A banana.

Throwing bananas at black players wasn't uncommon in the Seventies. One person did more than anyone else to snuff the appalling habit out. It wasn't an FA committee man. It was John Barnes. Looking at a yellow fruit on the ground beside him early in his career he bent down, picked it up. As the spectators watched, he carefully peeled back the skin. And ate it.

The crowd laughed. A fool was humiliated. A problem was reduced. Stick the money in your back pocket next time Jamie.